Saturday morning, I had the immense pleasure of tagging along on a little trip my coworker, Anela, set up as part of a story for Living in Las Cruces magazine...a trip across the Mesilla Valley in a hot air balloon.
We met in the parking lot of Mayfield High School; myself, Anela and her boyfriend, Ed, Claudia, Jeff and Jesse, our photographer and a good friend. It was freezing and we were all bundled up, our breaths visible in the early morning. The balloon crew pulled up and gave us directions, talked to us about the process of setting up to fly, then we walked across the parking lot to help unload the trailer. All the while, Jesse was snapping photos for the article, which will come out in a future edition.
Anela and Ed were the first ones up for a ride, so Jesse, Claudia, Jeff and I jumped in my car and tried following the chase crew for the next landing. Jesse had the window rolled down, snapping pictures above the car. We turned west onto Picacho Avenue and passed the chase crew, so we pulled into the center lane. Jesse continued to snap photos, and as soon as the chase crew drove by, we started to follow, but when I turned back onto the street, a Dona Ana County Sherriff's deputy pulled us over, thinking Jesse's camera was a bomb or gun or something. He looked at all of us like we were crazy.
He let us go (thank God!), but we had lost the balloon chase crew, so we just tried to find it ourselves. Turns out, we are really good at balloon chasing, and we found the balloon before the chase crew did! We jumped out of the car, but were still a ways away from the balloon, and we had to jump a six-foot fence. On the other side of a fence was an irrigation ditch that none of us saw...and I almost lost my footing jumping over. Jeff and Claudia rushed over to the balloon, then went up...I was off again, jumping over the fence to get back to my car and chase down the balloon.
Next, it was my turn, along with Jesse. We trekked through a field of mud to get to the balloon, hopped in and we were off.
It was probably the most exhilarating experience of my life, flying over the trees and the houses and the dogs barking and chasing their tails, confused. I informed our pilot, Jim, that I wanted to be proposed to in a hot air balloon, and Jim obliged, then told me of a couple in Taos and their unique proposal a couple hundred feet above the Earth. Jim had us look out over the horizon, and there were nothing but pecan trees for miles. Jim said he would land the balloon in a small patch of land being developed by G.L. Green. We had to land fast, so Jim said that it would be a hard one. We actually had to go so low, we went through five or six pecan trees, breaking branches off and getting wet from the moisture still sitting on the leaves.
Jim called it a "Yee-Haw Landing," and we were going pretty fast. He said to hang on to the ropes and brace ourselves for impact by bending our knees. We hit so hard, it jarred me into the side of the basket, bruising both of my knees. As were were trying to recover, the balloon almost fell over and I could see myself tumbling out of the basket into the mud. Luckily, we had stabilized and the crew dragged us over to the road so we could disassemble the balloon. What a rush! I was still shaking when I climbed into my car to drive back to Mayfield.
In the parking lot, the crew set out the breakfast they had prepared for us, including mimosas. They called it the traditional "Champagne breakfast" and we were then initiated into the club of balloon chasers by having champagne poured over our heads. The crew was outstanding and we laughed about the whole experience. We went home a little buzzed, beaming from ear-to-ear and with one less thing to do on our list of things to experience in this lifetime.
No comments:
Post a Comment